Archive for the 'Sotheby’s' Category
1st Dibs and the future of consignment
Tuesday, April 16th, 2013For a dealer, the consignment option has equal if not more value than to an auctioneer. Consigned inventory is controlled inventory, and how you sell it depends upon a liquidation time frame. There are many options that dealers could offer, like being a conduit for consignors to the technology of 1st Dibs while also offering [...]
Free Admission to Galleries and Auctions, Why not Fairs
Monday, January 21st, 2013There is reluctance in the Trade, about being able to attract new and especially younger people as to what we sell. Starting with the image of the word “antique”, what might that conjured up in the mind of a smart-phone packing 20/30 year old? We’re in an industry that specialized is turning off the next [...]
My Bully Pulpit For Regulation; AAD
Sunday, January 6th, 2013The AAD (art-antiques-design.com) website has quite frankly, been publishing some of my “old blogs”, which somehow I find really refreshing. They make me think that this industry faces the same issues. However, I enjoy responding to some of the comments on my blog and making comments on other AAD blogs. There is as interaction on [...]
It Can’t be True, Disclosure?
Thursday, October 25th, 2012I guess if you live long enough perhaps you will think the impossible can really happen. Is the mighty shield of auction secrecy about to be broken; perhaps. It boggles my mind trying to comprehend the recent opinion of the New York State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division rendering the legal need for an auctioneer to [...]
One Last Chance for the Decorative Arts
Friday, September 28th, 2012The split between the worlds of antique furniture and the decorative arts verse the fine arts of the 20th Century, seems pretty dramatic. One works well with the buyer’s premium imposed on the buyer, perhaps one might work better with just adhering to a seller’s commission. The decorative arts were never mean to evolve into [...]
A Start-Up Attitude, To Make it Better
Sunday, September 2nd, 2012If any industry represented the total opposite of New Age technology, it must be the decorative arts, far ahead of the fine arts. In the decorative arts, the Sotheby’s/Christie’s duopoly look as tired as their “fellow” dealers, no easy buck in either format. So where will a start-up attitude ever come from this present industry [...]
Will The Next Generation Revive The Decorative Arts?
Wednesday, August 29th, 2012During the last ten to fifteen years, the decorative arts have slowly caught up to the Fine Arts’ insatiable appetite for the 20th Century. A generation of consumers has been fed a steady diet of this period and an older generation is downsizing into it. Our industry’s avoidance of any counterbalance towards other styles and [...]
Dealers, Living in Their Small World
Saturday, April 28th, 2012There is no better way to understand the state of being a decorative arts dealer than going out and visiting their shops. Each one is an island unto itself, with the proprietor and his staff (hopefully) available to show the inventory and (hopefully) engage in a conversation about “the trade”. However as an industry, they [...]
A New Reality for Auctions, in the Decorative Arts
Tuesday, March 6th, 2012I was advised that my bashing the Duopoly auctioneers is a bit overdone. Perhaps is it, but looking at the state of divergence between the decorative and fine arts markets, these auctioneers realize which one has reduced maintenance and storage costs which tend to be pretty high and fixed, for an easier way. Now is [...]
The Seminal Year of 2011
Friday, December 23rd, 2011As this year draws to an end I can’t help but look back over the last decade, and realize how my business and its industry have evolved. Ten years ago we lived in an emerging internet world, and the start of the decline in the traditional decorative arts. A decade or so before, when the [...]